Another mass shooting triggers more denial

This is how a number of readers responded to an earlier column about the Aurora, Colo., theater shooting a few weeks ago and shootings here.

But another week, another mass shooting, this one Sunday in Oak Creek, Wis., at a Sikh temple near where I recently lived. And white supremacy will be the side issue here, at least from initial reports.

White supremacy is insane but let's focus on more conventional views of mental health for the moment.

A chat with Leon Evans, CEO of the Center for Health Care Services in Bexar County, indicates pressing mental health issues locally and presumably everywhere.

The chat, however, also indicated an ambitious effort here that manages to send some 1,100 people with substance abuse (the Wisconsin shooter had problems with alcohol) and mental health issues to treatment monthly instead of jail.

Bexar County is a model, Evans said.

I asked him if such a system would be capable of detecting and treating everyone with a mental illness who shouldn't have a gun.

“Of course not,” he said.

But he adds — and I second — that most people with mental illness pose no danger and that they tend to be crime victims more often than perpetrators.

And, still, Texas law is clear that people who have been diagnosed with certain psychiatric disorders should not have handguns, for instance.

But consider: most people with mental illnesses are not in the public care system. And they are not necessarily red-flagged in a background check if they are.

You must have been deemed mentally incompetent by a judge or other legal authority, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokeswoman told me.

And this occurs only with a fraction of the mentally ill population.

We do have a mental health problem — it's just that violence against others isn't the biggest part. And focusing just on this ignores the obvious availability of the instrument that enables the few to undertake the carnage.

Some mitigation for starters: a ban on assault weapons, on magazines capable of carrying enough rounds to battle an army or otherwise having enough ammo to do so. You know, the kind of weapon and ammo drum allegedly used to kill Bexar County Sheriff's Sgt. Kenneth Vann last year in San Antonio.

But there's a bigger problem. The weapon used in the Wisconsin shooting Sunday, a 9 mm handgun, is rather banal. Handguns that fire every time you pull the trigger are ubiquitous, though the shooter bought three 19-round magazines.

In Tucson, Jared Loughner used a 9 mm, bought legally, to kill six and wound others, including Rep. Gabrielle Gifford. Loughner reportedly suffers from mental illness.

Semiautomatic also is the word used to describe the handgun allegedly used by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting in Texas, killing 13. Also bought legally. And mental illness was raised early here, too.

By all means, let's talk about mental illness and white supremacy, societal problems for sure. But ignoring the availability of guns to people who clearly should not have them is tantamount to heads in the sand. The better not to hear the gunshots.

Let's understand what makes killers tick but let's not pretend that it doesn't take a tool — a clock — for a tick to happen. Guns are the tools of choice for killers.